With capital largely squandered, there seemed to them no other course to pursue.

The directors sold directly to concessionaires, who had to make their profits above the high prices asked by the company.
These concessionaires traded where they wished and generally dealt with the Indians through engages, who might be habitants, voyageurs, or even soldiers.
The concessionaires also had to pay a tax of one-tenth on the goods they traded, and all pelts were to be taken to company stores and shipped to France in company ships.
The company disposed of the pelts, but with what profit, the records do not show.

In accord with its penurious policy, the company failed to furnish presents to hold the loyalty of the principal Indians.
The lavish use of presents had been effective in expanding the Indian trade of New France and Louisiana in the previous century, and the change in liberality aroused resentment in the minds of the red men.
Traders from the English colonies were far more generous, and Indian loyalty turned to them.
Protests from governors and intendants passed unheeded, and the parsimonious policy of the company probably let loose Indian insurrections that brought ruin to the company.

In 1721 the King sent three commissioners to Louisiana with full powers to do all that was necessary to protect the colony.
They ordered the raising of troops and obtained 75,000 livres with which to build forts.
They adopted a program by which Louisiana was divided into five districts.
In each of these there was to be a strong military post, and a trading depot to supply the smaller trading houses.
For southeastern Louisiana, Mobile was the principal post, and it was to furnish supplies for trade to the north and east, in the region threatened by British traders.
Mobile was to be the anchor of a chain of posts extending northward to the sources of the Tennessee River.
Fort Toulouse, on the Alabama River, had been erected in 1714 for trade with the Alabamas and Choctaws, but money was available for only one other new post, near the present Nashville, Tennessee, and this was soon abandoned.

West of the Mobile district was the lower Mississippi district, of which New Orleans was headquarters.
Dependent upon it were posts on the lower Mississippi and the region westward to the frontiers of New Spain.

On the middle Mississippi a principal post was to be located near the mouth of the Arkansas.
It was hoped that to this post would flow a large quantity of furs from the west, principally down the Arkansas River.
On the Ohio or Wabash was to be built another post "at the fork of two great rivers".
Other posts would be established up the Ohio and Wabash to protect communication with Canada.
On the upper Mississippi the Illinois post was to be established near Kaskaskia, and dependent posts were to be built on the Missouri, "where there are mines in abundance".

Each of the five principal posts was to have a director, responsible to a director-general at New Orleans.
An elaborate system of accounting and reports was worked out, and the trade was to be managed in the most scientific way.
Concessionaires were to be under the supervision of the directors.
Engages must be loyal to the concessionaires, and must serve until the term provided in the engagement was ended.
The habitants were to be encouraged to trade and were to dispose of their pelts to the concessionaires.

Only two principal storehouses were actually established -- one at Mobile, the other at New Orleans.
New Orleans supplied the goods for the trade on the Mississippi, and west of that river, and on the Ohio and Wabash.
Mobile was also supplied by New Orleans with goods for the Mobile district.

The power that Bienville exercised during his first administration cannot be determined.
Regulations for the Indian trade were made by the Conseil superieure de la Louisiane, and Bienville apparently did not have control of that body.
The Conseil even treated the serious matter of British aggression as its business and, on its own authority, sent to disaffected savages merchandise "suitable for the peltry trade".
It decided, also, that the purely secular efforts of Bienville were insufficient, and sent missionaries to win the savages from the heathen Carolinians.

During the first administration of Bienville, the peltry trade of the Mobile district was a lucrative source of revenue.
The Alabamas brought in annually 15,000 to 20,000 deerskins, and the Choctaws and Chickasaws brought the total up to 50,000 pelts.
These deerskins were the raw material for the manufacture of leather, and were the only articles which the tribes of this district had to exchange for European goods.

During his first administration, Bienville succeeded in keeping Carolina traders out of the Alabama country and the Choctaw country.
The director of the post at Mobile kept an adequate amount of French goods, of a kind to which they were accustomed, to supply the Indian needs.
The Alabama and Tombigbee rivers furnished a highway by which goods could be moved quickly and cheaply.
De La Laude, commander of the Alabama post, had the friendship of the natives, and was able to make them look upon the British as poor competitors.
Diron D'Artaguette, the most prominent trader in the district, was energetic and resourceful, but his methods often aroused the ire of the French governors.
He became, after a time, commander of a post on the Alabama River, but his operations extended from Mobile throughout the district, and he finally obtained a monopoly of the Indian trade.

The Chickasaws were the principal source of trouble in the Mobile district.
Their territory lay to the north, near the sources of the Alabama, the Tombigbee, the Tennessee, and Cumberland rivers, and was easily accessible to traders among the near-by Cherokees.
In 1720 some Chickasaws massacred the French traders among them, and did not make peace for four years.
Venturesome traders, however, continued to come to them from Mobile, and to obtain a considerable number of pelts for the French markets.
British traders from South Carolina incited the Indians against the French, and there developed French and British Factions in the tribe.
The Chickasaws finally were the occasion for the most disastrous wars during the French control of Louisiana.
To hold them was an essential part of French policy, for they controlled the upper termini of the routes from the north to Mobile.
They threatened constantly to give the British a hold on this region, from whence they could move easily down the rivers to the French settlements near the Gulf.

Bienville realized that if the French were to hold the southeastern tribes against the enticements of British goods, French traders must be able to offer a supply as abundant as the Carolinians and at reasonable prices.
His urgings brought some results.
The Company of the Indies promised to send over a supply of Indian trading goods, and to price them more cheaply in terms of deerskins.
But it coupled with this a requirement that Indians must bring their pelts to Mobile and thus save all costs of transportation into and out of the Indian country.

The insistence of Bienville upon giving liberal prices to the Indians, in order to drive back the Carolina traders, was probably a factor that led to his recall in 1724.
For two years his friend and cousin, Boisbriant, remained as acting governor and could do little to stem the Anglican advance.
Although he incited a few friendly Indians to pillage the invaders, and even kill some of them, the Carolina advance continued.

The company was impressed with some ideas of the danger from Carolina, and when Perier came over as governor in 1727, he was given special instructions regarding the trade of the Mobile district.
But the Company of the Indies, holding to its program of economy, made no arrangements to furnish better goods at attractive prices.
To the directors the problem appeared a matter of intrigue or diplomacy.
Perier attempted to understand the problem by sending agents to inquire among the Indians.
These agents were to ascertain the difference between English and French goods, and the prices charged the Indians.
They were to conciliate the unfriendly savages, and, wherever possible, to incite the natives to pillage the traders from Carolina.
They were to promise fine presents to the loyal red men, as well as an abundant supply of trading goods at better prices than the opposition was offering.
Perier's intrigues gained some successes.
The savages divided into two factions;
one was British and the other, French.
So hostile did these factions become that, among the Choctaws, civil war broke out.

Perier's efforts, however, were on the whole ineffective in winning back the tribes of the Mobile district, and he decided to send troops into the troubled country.
He asked the government for two hundred soldiers, who were to be specifically assigned to arrest English traders and disloyal Indians.
In spite of the company's restrictions, he planned to build new posts in the territory.
He asked also for more supplies to trade at a low price for the Indians' pelts.

No help came from the crown, and Perier, in desperation, gave a monopoly of the Indian trade in the district to D'Artaguette.
D'Artaguette went vigorously to work, and gave credit to many hunters.
But they brought back few pelts to pay their debts, and soon French trade in the region was at an end.
Perier finally, in one last bid in 1730, cut the price of goods to an advance of 40 per cent above the cost in France.
The Indians were not impressed and held to the Carolina traders, who swarmed over the country, almost to the Mississippi.

With the loss of the Mobile trade, which ended all profits from Louisiana, the Natchez Indians revolted.
They destroyed a trading house and pillaged the goods, and harassed French shipping on the Mississippi.
The war to subdue them taxed the resources of the colony and piled up enormous debts.
In January, 1731, the company asked the crown to relieve it of the government of the colony.
It stated that it had lost 20,000,000 livres in its operations, and apparently blamed its poor success largely on the Indian trade.
It offered to surrender its right to exclusive trade, but asked an indemnity.
The King accepted the surrender and fixed the compensation of the company at 1,450,000 livres.
Thenceforth, the commerce of Louisiana was free to all Frenchmen.

Company rule in Louisiana left the colony without fortifications, arms, munitions, or supplies.
The difficulties of trade had ruined many voyageurs, and numbers of them had gone to live with the natives and rear half-blood families.
Others left the country, and there was no one familiar with the Indian trade.
If this trade should be resumed, the habitants who had come to be farmers or artisans, and soldiers discharged from the army, must be hardened to the severe life of coureurs de bois.
This was a slow and difficult course, and French trade suffered from the many mistakes of the new group of traders.
These men were without capital or experience.

Perier and Salmon, the intendant, wished either to entrust the trade to an association of merchants or to have the crown furnish goods on credit to individuals who would repay their debts with pelts.
Bienville, who returned to succeed Perier in 1732, objected that the merchants would not accept the responsibility of managing a trade in which they could see no hope of profits.
He reported, too, that among the habitants there were none of probity and ability sufficient to justify entrusting them with the King's goods.
He did find some to trust, however, and he employed the King's soldiers to trade.
With no company to interfere, he kept close control over all the traders.

In order to compete with English traders, Bienville radically changed the price schedule.
The King should expect no profit, and an advance of only 20 per cent above the cost in France, which would cover the expense of transportation and handling, was all he charged the traders.